Bulk nail pan for automatic nailing machine



H. J. cor-m ,50 ,192

BULK NAIL PAN FOR AUTOMATIC NAILING MACHINE March 24, 1970 Filed Jan. 15, 1968 INVENTOR. HAROLD J. COHN 66am al a ATTORNEYS United States PatentO 3,502,192 BULK NAIL PAN FOR AUTOMATIC NAILIN G MACHINE Harold J. Cohn, 1523 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Augeles, Calif. 90035 Filed Jan. 15, 1968, Ser. No. 697,695 Int. Cl. B65g 47/24 U.S. C]. 198-33 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE A nail pan is provided for pneumatic nailing machines for holding bulk nails and facilitating feeding of the nails one at a time to the machine. The pan includes an elongated slot on its bottom wall including an enlarged opening at one end so dimensioned that only one nail at a time can fall through the bottom slot. A receiving guide structure for the nails in the form of L-shaped flanges are secured to the underside of the bottom wall and define a second elongated slot or guide track which receives nails passed through the first slot and confines them in an ordered array for dispensing to the machine.

This invention relates generally to nail pans for holding bulk nails for use on automatic nailing machines and more particularly to an improved pan structure facilitating the feeding of the bulk nails to the machine.

Nail pans of the type under consideration are those arranged to receive bulk nails or random separated nails as opposed to magazine nail dispensing structures wherein the nails are provided in an ordered array and fed to an automatic nailing machine. The former type of pan structures are advantageous in that it is very simple to simply load the bulk nails into the pan and upon operation of the machine which serves to shake the pan provide nails from the pan in an ordered array automatically. Heretofore, pan structures of this type for holding nails in a random manner have included a bottom wall with an elongated slot which communicates with a front lower portion of the pan so that nails received in the slot will be dispensed from the pan one at a time.

Such pan structures as described above have Worked fairly satisfactorily where the successive nailing speed is not too rapid. However, for rapid repetitive nailing, it is not always assured that there will be fed a nail from the pan primarily because of possible interference between two or more nails merging towards the slot structure simultaneously. The result is that a nail may not be properly fed in the slot until the pan is shaken by the machine a second time. In other words, a delay can be introduced such that there may not result the dispensing of a nail at the time the machine is to be operated.

With the foregoing in mind, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved pan structure wherein there will always be available nails to be dispensed from the pan even though some delay may occur in the initial feeding of random nails into positions to be dispensed.

More particularly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved nail pan structure defining a secondary receiving area for aligning nails in an ordered array preparatory to being dispensed one at a time all to the end that extremely rapid successive operation of the nailing machine may take place with the assurance that there will always be a nail in ready position to be received in the machine.

Briefly, these and many other objects and advantages of this invention are attained by providing a nail pan defining a first area for the nails together with means defining a second area for receiving the nails from the first area and holding them in an ordered fashion preparatory to dispensing of the same. Separating means are provided between the areas to keep the nails in random orientation separated from nails in an ordered fashion, the separating means including a communicating means for passing nails from the first area to the second area. With this arrangement, there are provided a plurality of nails in the second area in an ordered array and from these latter nails, one at a time may readily be dispensed at a rapid rate.

A better understanding of the invention will be had by now referring to a preferred embodiment thereof as illustrated in the accompanying drawings in which:

FIGURE 1 is a perspective view of a typical automatic nailing machine incorporating the improved nail pan of this invention;

FIGURE 2 is an enlarged cutaway perspective view of the nail pan shown in FIGURE 1; and,

FIGURE 3 is a cross section taken in the direction of the arrows 3-3 of FIGURE 2.

Refer-ring first to FIGURE 1 there is illustrated at 10 a pneumatic nailing machine including a bulk nail receiving pan 11 movably mounted as by a mounting structure 12 to the nailing machine in such a manner that the pan 11 is caused to shake in an up and down direction as indicated by the double headed arrow 13 upon operation of the nailing machine. The purpose for shaking the pan is to agitate the nails and thereby facilitate feeding of one nail at a time to the nailing machine. The dispensed nails are received in a suitable chute or receiving opening 14 forming part of a nailing machine and fall into proper position in a nose-piece structure 15 for ultimate driving into a work. In the machine of FIGURE 1, there is shown a stirrup structure adjacent the nosepiece for receiving a workers foot and a handle at the upper end of the nailing machine so that a person using the machine may walk with the machine in nailing roof panels.

The present invention is concerned with the structure of the pan 11 for assuring feeding of one nail at a time in a proper orientation to the chute 14 of the nailing machine 10. The particular type of nailing machine itself forms no part of the present invention and thus a detailed description thereof is not deemed necessary.

Referring now to FIGURE 2, the pan 11 is generally box shaped and includes a top wall 16 having a door 17 hinged at 18 for providing access to the interior of the pan. As shown in the cutaway portion, the bottom wall of the pan includes a bottom central section 19, a left sloping bottom portion 20 and a right sloping bottom portion 21 merging into the fiat central portion 19. This latter portion includes an elongated slot 22 having an enlarged opening 23 at one end. Left and right side walls 24 and 25 extend upwardly from the outer edges of the bottom wall sloping surface portions 20 and 21 to connect to the upper side edges of the top wall 16. The pan structure is completed by a rear wall 26 and a front wall including an upwardly and inwardly sloping center section 27 and outer vertical portions 28 and 29-. The upwardly inwardly sloping center section 27 is merely formed to permit a maximum swinging of the pan 11 without interference with the vertical portion of the nailing machine 10 of FIGURE 1 when mounted as shown.

Secured to the underside of the bottom wall of the pan is a guide structure including L-shaped channels 30 and 31 having their horizontal portions in opposing relationship to define a second elongated slot 32.

With particular reference to FIGURE 3, it will be noted that the slot 32 is positioned in vertical alignment with the first-mentioned slot 22 in the bottom central portion of the pan with one end of the second slot 32 positioned under the enlarged opening 23 of the first slot.

The interior of the pan thus defines a first area 33 for receiving bulk nails 34 which may be disposed in a random manner as indicated. The guide structure defined by the L-shaped channels 30 and 31, on the other hand, define a second area for receiving nails in an ordered array such as illustrated wherein a plurality of nails are shown in series, one behind the other, and in like orientation. The fiat central bottom wall portion 19 of the pan with the elongated slot 22 and enlarged opening 23 may be considered a separation means between the random nails and the first interior portion of the pan 33 and the ordered nails in the second area defined by the L-shaped channels. In the embodiment shown, and as indicated in FIGURE 3, the first area is shown at a first level L1 and the second area at a second level L2 lower than the first area.

The separating means includes a communicating means between the first and second areas in the form of the elongated first slot 22 and enlarged head 23. In this respect, if the diameter of a nail head is D, the diameter of the enlarged opening 23 indicated at D is of a size between one and two times the diameter D. Further, and with reference to FIGURE 2, the width of the slot 22 indicated at D is made to lie between the diameter of the shank portion of any nail such as indicated at d in FIG- URE 3 and the diameter D of the head. By this dimensioning, only one nail at a time can fall through the slot structure and in this respect, any such nail falling through the slot will necessarily be oriented such that its head will pass through the enlarged opening 23.

By way of example, and with reference to FIGURE 3, there is illustrated a particular nail 34' having its shank portion 34a in a position just after passing through the elongated slot 22, and its head 34b in the process of passing through the enlarged opening 23. Nails already received from the first area into the guide structure are shown such as at 34", the undersides of the head 34"b resting on the opposed horizontal portions of the L-shaped channels 30 and 31 and the shank 34"a hanging through the second slot.

An important feature of this invention resides in the provision of a relatively large second receiving area as heretofore defined. In this respect, it is preferable that the length of the guide structure defined by the L-shaped channels 30 and 31 be greater than one half the distance between the front and rear walls of the overall pan structure. With this arrangement, it is assured that there will at all times .be a plurality of ordered nails in the second slot preparatory to being dispensed from the lower front portion of the pan.

In operation, bulk nails are randomly placed in the interior enclosure 33 of the pan by opening the access doors 17. Upon operation of the nailing machine, the pan is caused to rock in an up and down direction as described with respect to FIGURE 1 to shake the various random nails in the pan. Because of the sloping bottom wall portions 20 and 21 described in FIGURE 2, the nails will tend to fall towards the central portion of the bottom wall and because of the continued agitation of the nails, at least one of the nails will tend to align itself with the first slot 22 with its head received through the enlarged opening 23. This nail will be gravity fed to the guide structure defined by the L-shaped channels 30 and 31 all as illustrated in FIGURE 3 so that a plurality of nails in series relationship, one behind the other, will be aligned in this second area. The nail closest to the central front portion of the pan will always be in a ready position to be dispensed.

Should two or more of the randomly disposed nails in the interior of the pan itself interfere with each other in passing through the elongated slot 22, there will still be nails in the ordered array in the second slot 32 of the guide structure for dispensing purposes and it is possible that two or three of these ordered nails may be dispensed before further nails are received from the first area in the interior of the pan through the first slot 22. In one sense, the second receiving area wherein the nails are ordered, functions as a surge chamber and will assure that nails are always available for dispensing even though the nails may not consistently pass from the first area to the second area. The probabilities of there not being a nail available to the machine at the required time are thus enormously reduced by the pan structure of the present invention.

When all of the nails in the interior of the pan have been passed to the second area defined by the guide structure, there will still be nails available in this second area for feeding to the machine. The shaking of the pan each time the machine is operated will assure that eventually every nail in the pan will be fed to the second area. Also, this shaking of the pan normally causes a rattling noise of the nails in the pan and thus when the pan is empty, the absence of this rattling noise will indicate to the operator that the pan is empty. Normally, however, the operator will refill the pan with random or bulk nails prior to its becoming completely empty. On the other hand, and as noted heretofore, the machine may still be operative even when the interior of the pan is empty since a relatively large number of ordered nails are encompassed within the second area.

From the foregoing description, it will thus be evident that the present invention has provided a vastly improved bulk nail pan wherein the various objects set forth are fully realized.

What is claimed is:

1. A pan for dispensing nails one at a time in a given orientation in response to agitating of said nails, said pan having a bottom defining a first area for a portion of nails received in random manner in said pan, said pan additionally defining a second area underneath said bottom for another portion of said nails; and means providing communication between said first and second areas including an elongated first slot in the central bottom portion of said pan, said first slot merging into an enlarged opening, the dimensioning of said first slot and opening being such that the shank and head of only one nail at a time can pass respectively therethrough so that nails in said first area assume ordered positions in said second area in the form of successive single nails defining a single row of nails in a consistant orientation preparatory to being dispensed one at a time, said ordered nails in said second area being shielded by said bottom from interference by nails in said first area.

2. A pan according to claim 1, in which said second area includes a second slot having an initial portion disposed beneath said enlarged opening such that nails successively passed through said first slot and opening have their shank portion received through said second slot with the underside of their heads resting on the upper peripheral edges of said second area defining said second slot.

3. A bulk nail pan for mounting on an automatic nailing machine wherein said pan is agitated when said machine is operated to facilitate feeding of nails in said pan one at a time to said nailing machine, comprising: a generally box shaped structure having top, bottom, left, right, rear and front walls defining an enclosure for holding bulk nails, said top wall having a hinged portion defining an access door for adding nails to said pan, said bottom wall having inwardly and downwardly sloping portions extending from the lower left and right side walls towards a central portion of said bottom wall, said central portion including an elongated first slot greater in length than the length of any one nail in said pan running in a direction generally parallel to said side walls such that said nails tend to roll towards said first slot along said sloping portions to positions longitudinally aligned with said first slot, said first slot merging into an enlarged opening at one end of diameter between one and two times the diameter of the head of any one nail, the width of the remaining portion of said first slot being greater than the diameter of the shank of any one nail and less than the diameter of the head of any one nail; and a nail receiving guide track structure including L- shaped angle channels secured to the under side of said bottom wall in opposing relation with the horizontal portions of the L shapes spaced to define a second slot lying in the same vertical plane as said first slot but at a lower level, any nail head and shank passing through said enlarged opening and first slot falling into said second slot with its shank hanging vertically downwardly through said second slot and the undersides of its head resting on said horizontal portions of the L shapes, said nail receiving guide track structure extending longitudinally under said pan from said enlarged opening a given distance to an exit point adjacent to the front wall of said pan, said given distance being sufficient to support a plurality of nails in series, one behind the other, whereby said plurality of nails are in ready condition to be received one at a time by said nailing machine.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,722,820 7/1929 Murakoshi 198-43 X 2,546,354 3/1951 Bacon 221-163 X 3,367,015 2/ 1968 Brosene.

GERALD M. FORLENZA, Primary Examiner GEORGE F. ABRAHAM, Assistant Examiner U.SC. Cl. X.R. 

